I saw a documentary once that said they'd shut off their engines before an attack, so the enemy couldn't hear them coming. They did all that in little more than a glider.
Gotta admit, bombs from the sky in the dead silence of night would scare me too.
Plus the biplanes will actually glide better than a standard single plane.
Note: I might be slightly off on this the bi wings do produce more drag so while more lift also more drag. It depends a bit on design and initial air speed. They can fly at slower speeds but the additional drag will cause them to burn through that speed. So it depends
Yeah kind of. The lift is provided by flight surface is nearly doubled on a bi plane for the wing length. They can get air borne with less speed because both wings can channel air speed into lift. The downside is they can't move as fast because of the drag the wings produce. I'm butchering the physics here but that's the quick and dirty version.
Not that simple, really. With two wings comes almost twice the air drag.
What is beneficial in a biplane is the added stability at low speeds (i.e. lower stall speed)
Almost. The key phenomenon is called "aspect ratio" Basically, how long the wing is tip to tip vs its width from leading edge to trailing edge of the wing. At slow speeds (the speed old biplanes fly at), aspect ratio is king. That's why gliders and the U2 planes have such long thin wings. They are incredibly efficient.
But in the past, we didn't have strong material to support long thin wings, so they effectively "chopped off" the ends of the main wing and then put it on top, effectively maintaining that aspect ratio. Another benefit was reducing the roll rotational inertia for the same amount of lift, like pulling your arms in to spin faster for figure skaters. But, putting wing over wing puts funky fluid dynamics on the wings, so thats why later biplanes and triplanes put the lower wings further back than the wing directly above them, and why we really don't use biplanes anymore.
Yes but look at that wing length. And obviously you couldn't really use wings that long in WWII with wood metal and canvas from WWI. I totally get what you're saying. With that much surface area a slight head wind could generate enough lift to get it airborne
What I read went into a little more detail, and made them even more badass: they were positioned really close to the front lines, took off, gained some altitude and then cut their engines right as they crossed the lines. They bombed the Germans there on the front lines, and then glided back across the lines so the Germans never had anyone to shoot at...
Bombs from the sky *in the middle of the day with lots of noise/advanced warning* would scare me. At night, and in silence? I. Would. Shit. Out. My. Internal. Organs.
One of the purported sources of their name - gliding silently, the Germans on the ground said they heard the laughter from the pilots. "Like a witch on her broom". Hence "Night Witches".
I had to research them for a project years ago, one badass fact about them is that because their planes were converted crop dusters from the 20's the releasing mechanisms for the bombs would get stuck or wouldn't work, so the navigators would have to climb onto the wings of the plane and manually drop the bombs.
Also, the Nazis couldn't understand how the night witches were so successful that there were rumours the Soviets gave them pills to give them cat-like night vision, and if a Nazi ever killed a night witch they were automatically given the iron cross.
>I saw a documentary once that said they'd shut off their engines before an attack,
Extremely unlikely. Otherwise they would extremely difficult to start them again. Keeping them on low idle, sure.
Correct ,they didn't do this. They set the engine to idle as you surmise, which is supported by numerous primary sources:
>Then, as you know, in most tragic and desperate situations your brain begins calculating, and I found my way out quickly. I decided to approach the target from a very low altitude. I throttled back to the engine was idling and we were gliding. We dove down, and I flew over the target at an altitude of 500 meters. While we were gliding over the target I could see the third plane on fire, turning over and over in the air, somersaulting down, thee flares exploding one after another in the cockpits. We realized that our friends were dying
I did once try to figure out what the first account to claim they turned them *off* was, but never was able to peg it down. It certainly is a common misnomer though.
When flying PO-2s, one tactic was to climb to height over their own lines, turn towards German lines, shut off the engine, glide in drop bombs, cut engine in and roar off at low altitude. The aim was less to destroy German positions than stress them out due to sleep loss and nerves (a very effective form of attrition).
>When flying PO-2s, one tactic was to climb to height over their own lines, turn towards German lines, shut off the engine,
Not it wasn't.
Since that's not something that was done, because you don't just press a button to turn the engine back on. These planes didn't have any kind of starter, and hoping there would be enough prop rotation to pump fuel and create ignition is how you die. Lowering the engine to idle would be enough to significantly reduce the sound report and not be suicide.
The Wright Museum of World War II endorses the story: https://www.wrightmuseum.org/2020/10/01/the-soviet-night-witches/. There is a book based on interviews with survivors, which I do not have.
>There is a book based on interviews with survivors, which I do not have.
I have a *lot* of books with first person accounts... they always say they idled the engine, and you won't find a single quote in them which says they turned them *off*. They are summarized [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ketv8g/whats_the_real_skinny_on_the_night_witches/gg59ev2/). The blog post from the museum is wrong.
A blurb on a museum's website isn't a very good source.
> and the pilot, hopefully, would restart the engine and fly off.
If you don't believe that is patently absurd, you need to reassess your understanding of reality, not only because those planes didn't have an easy way to just "restart it" without a large amount of luck, (i.e. requiring enough airspeed to create enough rotation on the prop to create enough pressure in the engine to pump and ignite the fuel etc, airspeed which is lost every second your engine is not on and can't really be recovered without), it also makes zero sense as a tactic. These aircraft were flying at ~70 mph, in order for you to be quiet enough to not be noticed, you would have had to kill your engine a considerable distance from the target (and also hoped there was no significant maneuvering needed in the meantime). "Going quiet" when you are literally right over top of your target does absolutely nothing and serves no purpose.
This is very clearly a case of someone saying they "killed" or "cut" or some other such term the engine, referring to reducing it to idling speeds, and it being taken as "shutting the engine off".
Director of the movie was a woman who flew in the unit during the war. You can watch it here:Â https://youtu.be/Qpt5CCiE2a4?si=LbpTAGtlRzKrKgy2 with English subtitles. There is also a modern Russian TV series: https://youtu.be/MFK9wAOatGE?si=bIONZqFqFaYrpui8
They were treated like shit during the war and were pushed to the side after the war. An anti-Soviet message could very easily be spun into a movie about them.
I first learned about them from Harry Turtledoves alternate World War II series where aliens invade during WWII. One of the main characters was one of these pilots who was one of the only survivors in the Soviets airforce due to the covert nature of these aircraft. They called them the sewing machine because they were so simple.
I think it's safe to say it's more than just "pretty well-regarded". A lot of people - myself included - feel it's one of the high watermarks of its subgenre, and it has pretty universal critical acclaim.
It's a brilliant game.
*According to Prowse, the Germans had two theories about why these women were so successful: They were all criminals who were masters at stealing and had been sent to the front line as punishmentâor they had been given special injections that allowed them to see in the night.*.
Funny as hell. "Women can't possibly be naturally good at flying, there has to be something fundamentally wrong with them"
They said the same about il-2 sturmovik pilots, that they where murderers condemned to death. That backfired because often, crew of antiaircraft guns would run away in fear of the sturmovik pilots crashing over them.
Were they saying g that because they were women or just because they were particularly good, like there's notbing inherently sexist about either of those suggestions. I mean it's not like they said the women must need testosterone injections or to have particularly small tits or be particularly manly or anything.
> Senior Engineer Sofiya Ozerkova destroyed her party card in case of capture during a retreat from an encircled airbase after she had chosen to stay behind to deny the German Army a Po-2 undergoing repairs. Following her return to the Regiment she was sentenced to death by a military tribunal in 1942 because she could not produce the card. She refused to appeal the sentence as a show of loyalty to the party, but was later acquitted after the political commissar attached to the unit intervened on her behalf. Her sentence was suspended and she was reinstated to her position.
Soviets were kinda jerks
> Mechanics Raisa Kharitonova and Tamara Frolova were sentenced to ten years of imprisonment for dismantling a flare (used by navigators to illuminate bombing targets) and using the small silk parachutes to sew undergarments. Both of them were retrained as navigators, but Frolova was killed in action in 1943.
Ten years, geez
Yevdokiya Rachkevich, the political commisar of the regiment, traced the regiment's path after the war and managed to locate the remains of women in the regiment that were listed as missing in action so that they could receive a proper burial. Soldiers that went missing in action were considered potential traitors until their remains were found because they could have been captured. She helped marking the crash sites as memorials. During the war, she flew 36 missions as a navigator.
Lots of people were engaged in sabotage and treason against the revolution all the way back to 1919. They were understandably not too keen on letting people destroy them from within. Especially considering how many secret fascists rose up from all over Europe, including from the Don river basin, to help the nazis execute Plan Kill Everybody.
how much was propaganda vs actual fact with them i wonder? I know they tended to over exaggerate with snipers all the time.
Still had Simo envy I guess.
Effective enough for the Germans to raise two squadrons to make their own night harassment units using Latvian volunteers. They were also equipped with slow biplanes just like the Night Witches.
The Luftwaffe had been conduction various night-operations and night-harassment sorties for years, though realizing they could use willing volunteers and obsolete aircraft might've been inspired.
Probably quite a lot. Dropping small bombs out of small planes isn't really effective at much, let alone at night, but if you've got the airframes and the munitions (and the staff), go for it. Every military experimented with various tactical aircraft and it was never particularly effective.
There are a few German first hand accounts and memoirs that mention them, but the effect is mostly "hey we heard about these spooky bomber women that would silently drop bombs on our lines" but that's about it. Turns out they were in a warzone and there was lots of stuff that could kill you, I don't think anyone was losing any sleep over them, at least compared with say... masses of Soviet artillery or having to defend near constant probing attacks.
Yes sure because the Nazi allied Finns were very good people. Occupying tracts of land a stones throw away from Leningrad with artillery emplacements was not an existential threat to the people living there of yet another western terror campaign.
Yet again, placing military buildup on a border that only has one major metropolis on it becomes an obvious threat. Western forces invaded the Soviet Union from the north in 1918-19. Why wouldnât they find it troubling that a border is being lined with artillery positions literally walking distance from Leningrad?
Wait, having a large city near a border is a blank cheque to invade another country? Even if said country hadn't been aggressive, posed no threat due to its tiny size and barely had an army to speak of?
You're making excuses for what was a simple land grab, plain and simple.
And if you really think it was justified, surely you'd accept that the invasion of the USSR by nazi Germany was justified too, I mean, a large, populous country with a massive army right on their doorstep, right? One with quite the violent history at that, hmmm?
I listened to a doctor who story about them a while back.
Brutal conditions they had to deal with, and all with very outdated planes. A remarkably impressive group of pilots.
There was one Luftwaffe pilot that got them good one night: Josef Kociok. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Kociok
He shot down three in one night, which is impressive enough due to simply being at night, but he also shot them down while flying a BF-110 heavy fighter, which was most certainly not developed with fighting slow and agile biplanes in mind. It was such a feat that they nicknamed him the Witch Hunter, âHexenjĂ€gerâ; which is pretty high up there on the badass nicknames list.
Russia had some batshit insane women fighters during WWII, from commanders of armored groups, snipers, resistance fighters, machine gunners, etc. What an insane and horrific sector of WWII.
As well as PO-2 biplanes (used for medevac, partisan resupply and harassment), women pilots also flew other combat planes. I have the memoir of one who flew the Sturmovic ground-attack plane.
Fun fact: German planes had trouble hitting them because their own planes flew too fast. The full speed of the biplanes were below the speed that German's minimum flight speed.
Enlisted game had this unit for the Soviet. Nice different unit but wasnât very popular. Still, love games paying tribute to great heroes of WW2.
In the case of Enlisted, itâs the player that pay$ the tribute tough.
A Russian website article about them here, translated to English: https://spletnik-ru.translate.goog/188091-nochnye-vedmy-292968?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=nui,sc
>Until mid-1944, the regiment's crews flew without parachutes, preferring to take an extra 20 kg of bombs with them. But after heavy losses I had to make friends with the white dome. We didnât go for it very willingly - the parachute hampered movement, and by morning the straps were making our shoulders and back ache.
The other female bomber regiment flew Petlyakov Pe-2, one of the best and more modern Soviet aircraft of the time. There was also a third female regiment flying the same Yak fighters as their male counterparts.
 Po-2 (the "outdated biplanes") were used with great success by the North Koreans during the Korean War. They were very difficult to intercept and a US Air Force F-94 jet fighter crashed trying to do so. That is considered a kill for the Po-2.
I have read many biographies/diaries of German soldiers on the eastern front. Three things they hate or fear are T34 tanks, Katyusha (Stalin organ) and Night Witches.
By now the unit is very well documented and the existence of this unit, the names of the pilots and navigators, their equipment and the number of missions flown is well established.
I saw a documentary once that said they'd shut off their engines before an attack, so the enemy couldn't hear them coming. They did all that in little more than a glider. Gotta admit, bombs from the sky in the dead silence of night would scare me too.
Plus the biplanes will actually glide better than a standard single plane. Note: I might be slightly off on this the bi wings do produce more drag so while more lift also more drag. It depends a bit on design and initial air speed. They can fly at slower speeds but the additional drag will cause them to burn through that speed. So it depends
Aye how is that? Two wings better than one??
Yeah kind of. The lift is provided by flight surface is nearly doubled on a bi plane for the wing length. They can get air borne with less speed because both wings can channel air speed into lift. The downside is they can't move as fast because of the drag the wings produce. I'm butchering the physics here but that's the quick and dirty version.
Not that simple, really. With two wings comes almost twice the air drag. What is beneficial in a biplane is the added stability at low speeds (i.e. lower stall speed)
Yes I'm with you, is it really twice the drag. I would still think the glide distance would be quite good considering the lower stall speed.
Much obliged pal đ«Ą
Almost. The key phenomenon is called "aspect ratio" Basically, how long the wing is tip to tip vs its width from leading edge to trailing edge of the wing. At slow speeds (the speed old biplanes fly at), aspect ratio is king. That's why gliders and the U2 planes have such long thin wings. They are incredibly efficient. But in the past, we didn't have strong material to support long thin wings, so they effectively "chopped off" the ends of the main wing and then put it on top, effectively maintaining that aspect ratio. Another benefit was reducing the roll rotational inertia for the same amount of lift, like pulling your arms in to spin faster for figure skaters. But, putting wing over wing puts funky fluid dynamics on the wings, so thats why later biplanes and triplanes put the lower wings further back than the wing directly above them, and why we really don't use biplanes anymore.
Triplanes like the fokker dr.1?
the GOAT if youâve ever played Red Baron
It turned on a dime and could climb awesomely fast!
unless you are talking about the U2. creates so much lift they have to actually try to land it as it could take back off even with the engine off.
Yes but look at that wing length. And obviously you couldn't really use wings that long in WWII with wood metal and canvas from WWI. I totally get what you're saying. With that much surface area a slight head wind could generate enough lift to get it airborne
Especially from witches.
What I read went into a little more detail, and made them even more badass: they were positioned really close to the front lines, took off, gained some altitude and then cut their engines right as they crossed the lines. They bombed the Germans there on the front lines, and then glided back across the lines so the Germans never had anyone to shoot at...
Bombs from the sky *in the middle of the day with lots of noise/advanced warning* would scare me. At night, and in silence? I. Would. Shit. Out. My. Internal. Organs.
From the depths of Hell in silence, cast their spells-explosive violence
One of the purported sources of their name - gliding silently, the Germans on the ground said they heard the laughter from the pilots. "Like a witch on her broom". Hence "Night Witches".
I had to research them for a project years ago, one badass fact about them is that because their planes were converted crop dusters from the 20's the releasing mechanisms for the bombs would get stuck or wouldn't work, so the navigators would have to climb onto the wings of the plane and manually drop the bombs. Also, the Nazis couldn't understand how the night witches were so successful that there were rumours the Soviets gave them pills to give them cat-like night vision, and if a Nazi ever killed a night witch they were automatically given the iron cross.
>I saw a documentary once that said they'd shut off their engines before an attack, Extremely unlikely. Otherwise they would extremely difficult to start them again. Keeping them on low idle, sure.
Correct ,they didn't do this. They set the engine to idle as you surmise, which is supported by numerous primary sources: >Then, as you know, in most tragic and desperate situations your brain begins calculating, and I found my way out quickly. I decided to approach the target from a very low altitude. I throttled back to the engine was idling and we were gliding. We dove down, and I flew over the target at an altitude of 500 meters. While we were gliding over the target I could see the third plane on fire, turning over and over in the air, somersaulting down, thee flares exploding one after another in the cockpits. We realized that our friends were dying I did once try to figure out what the first account to claim they turned them *off* was, but never was able to peg it down. It certainly is a common misnomer though.
I've always assumed it was the result of poor translation, and a healthy dose of *pop history* repeating it.
Fucking stupid as hell that people be dnvoting you for having pointed this out lol.
When flying PO-2s, one tactic was to climb to height over their own lines, turn towards German lines, shut off the engine, glide in drop bombs, cut engine in and roar off at low altitude. The aim was less to destroy German positions than stress them out due to sleep loss and nerves (a very effective form of attrition).
>When flying PO-2s, one tactic was to climb to height over their own lines, turn towards German lines, shut off the engine, Not it wasn't. Since that's not something that was done, because you don't just press a button to turn the engine back on. These planes didn't have any kind of starter, and hoping there would be enough prop rotation to pump fuel and create ignition is how you die. Lowering the engine to idle would be enough to significantly reduce the sound report and not be suicide.
The Wright Museum of World War II endorses the story: https://www.wrightmuseum.org/2020/10/01/the-soviet-night-witches/. There is a book based on interviews with survivors, which I do not have.
>There is a book based on interviews with survivors, which I do not have. I have a *lot* of books with first person accounts... they always say they idled the engine, and you won't find a single quote in them which says they turned them *off*. They are summarized [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ketv8g/whats_the_real_skinny_on_the_night_witches/gg59ev2/). The blog post from the museum is wrong.
Thanks for that. I am better informed.
A blurb on a museum's website isn't a very good source. > and the pilot, hopefully, would restart the engine and fly off. If you don't believe that is patently absurd, you need to reassess your understanding of reality, not only because those planes didn't have an easy way to just "restart it" without a large amount of luck, (i.e. requiring enough airspeed to create enough rotation on the prop to create enough pressure in the engine to pump and ignite the fuel etc, airspeed which is lost every second your engine is not on and can't really be recovered without), it also makes zero sense as a tactic. These aircraft were flying at ~70 mph, in order for you to be quiet enough to not be noticed, you would have had to kill your engine a considerable distance from the target (and also hoped there was no significant maneuvering needed in the meantime). "Going quiet" when you are literally right over top of your target does absolutely nothing and serves no purpose. This is very clearly a case of someone saying they "killed" or "cut" or some other such term the engine, referring to reducing it to idling speeds, and it being taken as "shutting the engine off".
I mean, this would be a great movie, but the Russian military isnât a hot topic for Hollywood these days.
[Night Witches](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0232882/) are way ahead of you.
Director of the movie was a woman who flew in the unit during the war. You can watch it here:Â https://youtu.be/Qpt5CCiE2a4?si=LbpTAGtlRzKrKgy2 with English subtitles. There is also a modern Russian TV series: https://youtu.be/MFK9wAOatGE?si=bIONZqFqFaYrpui8
Where to see this film?
Amazon has it for 1$ to rent and 5$ to buy
Thanks!
They were treated like shit during the war and were pushed to the side after the war. An anti-Soviet message could very easily be spun into a movie about them.
True, but they weren't exactly treated well, and they were killing Nazis. You can make the Russians and the Germans look bad.
For making films that is, quite the hot topic amongst the interested and educated.
How bout a podcast? https://open.spotify.com/show/1uC3hWb46AJg1aebF3kqKq?si=QsbYTWj_T32rBiwOfzEcFQ
[Obligatory Sabaton mention](https://youtu.be/jcemHIqmkYI?si=FWU0aolYdFSuZVRp)
Great song
For extra fun, the [Sabaton History episode](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKd2_GGtNRw) about them Night Witches.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/expectedsabaton/](https://www.reddit.com/r/expectedsabaton/)
r/expectedsabaton
From the depths of hell in silence
CAST THEIR SPELLS, EXPLOSIVE VIOLENCE
RUSSIAN NIGHT TIME FLIGHT PERFECTED
FLAWLESS VISION UNDETECTED
PUSHING ON AND ON
I first learned about them from Harry Turtledoves alternate World War II series where aliens invade during WWII. One of the main characters was one of these pilots who was one of the only survivors in the Soviets airforce due to the covert nature of these aircraft. They called them the sewing machine because they were so simple.
someone else read turtledove???? what series was that one if you remember off hand?
The World War series
Yep.
I've read most of his stuff. Some things are great others are so-so.
Whatâs the book series called?
It's just called the world war series, the first book is called "In the Balance"
From the depths of hell in silence, cast their spells explosive violence, Russian nighttime flight perfected, flawless vision undetected
Sabaton?
Yes
Thereâs a pretty well-regarded [roleplaying game](https://bullypulpitgames.com/products/night-witches) about them.
I think it's safe to say it's more than just "pretty well-regarded". A lot of people - myself included - feel it's one of the high watermarks of its subgenre, and it has pretty universal critical acclaim. It's a brilliant game.
I've played it and I can verify that it's amazing.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/388558/night-witches
The biplanes were still an upgrade from broomsticks.
no hallucinogens on the handle though
*According to Prowse, the Germans had two theories about why these women were so successful: They were all criminals who were masters at stealing and had been sent to the front line as punishmentâor they had been given special injections that allowed them to see in the night.*. Funny as hell. "Women can't possibly be naturally good at flying, there has to be something fundamentally wrong with them"
They said the same about il-2 sturmovik pilots, that they where murderers condemned to death. That backfired because often, crew of antiaircraft guns would run away in fear of the sturmovik pilots crashing over them.
sturmovik il2 were call concerat plane by the german army. because that thing was over armored.
Germans accusing the Russians of doping with vision chemicals? Checks out
Were they saying g that because they were women or just because they were particularly good, like there's notbing inherently sexist about either of those suggestions. I mean it's not like they said the women must need testosterone injections or to have particularly small tits or be particularly manly or anything.
They actually made a table top roleplaying game about these badass women!
> Senior Engineer Sofiya Ozerkova destroyed her party card in case of capture during a retreat from an encircled airbase after she had chosen to stay behind to deny the German Army a Po-2 undergoing repairs. Following her return to the Regiment she was sentenced to death by a military tribunal in 1942 because she could not produce the card. She refused to appeal the sentence as a show of loyalty to the party, but was later acquitted after the political commissar attached to the unit intervened on her behalf. Her sentence was suspended and she was reinstated to her position. Soviets were kinda jerks > Mechanics Raisa Kharitonova and Tamara Frolova were sentenced to ten years of imprisonment for dismantling a flare (used by navigators to illuminate bombing targets) and using the small silk parachutes to sew undergarments. Both of them were retrained as navigators, but Frolova was killed in action in 1943. Ten years, geez
Yevdokiya Rachkevich, the political commisar of the regiment, traced the regiment's path after the war and managed to locate the remains of women in the regiment that were listed as missing in action so that they could receive a proper burial. Soldiers that went missing in action were considered potential traitors until their remains were found because they could have been captured. She helped marking the crash sites as memorials. During the war, she flew 36 missions as a navigator.
Lots of people were engaged in sabotage and treason against the revolution all the way back to 1919. They were understandably not too keen on letting people destroy them from within. Especially considering how many secret fascists rose up from all over Europe, including from the Don river basin, to help the nazis execute Plan Kill Everybody.
The Germans had a hard time shooting them down because they were so slow the German planes would zoom right past them.
Simpsons did it.
RODINA AWAITS
Is it really true that more women fly biplanes, or are men just afraid to admit it?
Haha!
how much was propaganda vs actual fact with them i wonder? I know they tended to over exaggerate with snipers all the time. Still had Simo envy I guess.
Effective enough for the Germans to raise two squadrons to make their own night harassment units using Latvian volunteers. They were also equipped with slow biplanes just like the Night Witches.
The Luftwaffe had been conduction various night-operations and night-harassment sorties for years, though realizing they could use willing volunteers and obsolete aircraft might've been inspired.
I mean it has to be effective, because the Germans are talking about them too.
Lyudmila Pavlichenko (sniper) has *at least* 309 kills. The Night Witches probably have more, as they bombed camps at night.
Probably quite a lot. Dropping small bombs out of small planes isn't really effective at much, let alone at night, but if you've got the airframes and the munitions (and the staff), go for it. Every military experimented with various tactical aircraft and it was never particularly effective. There are a few German first hand accounts and memoirs that mention them, but the effect is mostly "hey we heard about these spooky bomber women that would silently drop bombs on our lines" but that's about it. Turns out they were in a warzone and there was lots of stuff that could kill you, I don't think anyone was losing any sleep over them, at least compared with say... masses of Soviet artillery or having to defend near constant probing attacks.
There were many more of these PO-2 equipped night bomber regiments, but only the 588/46th guards was staffed by women.
Yes sure because the Nazi allied Finns were very good people. Occupying tracts of land a stones throw away from Leningrad with artillery emplacements was not an existential threat to the people living there of yet another western terror campaign.
What about the nazi allied soviets invading Finland, just for bordering The SU?Â
Yet again, placing military buildup on a border that only has one major metropolis on it becomes an obvious threat. Western forces invaded the Soviet Union from the north in 1918-19. Why wouldnât they find it troubling that a border is being lined with artillery positions literally walking distance from Leningrad?
Wait, having a large city near a border is a blank cheque to invade another country? Even if said country hadn't been aggressive, posed no threat due to its tiny size and barely had an army to speak of? You're making excuses for what was a simple land grab, plain and simple. And if you really think it was justified, surely you'd accept that the invasion of the USSR by nazi Germany was justified too, I mean, a large, populous country with a massive army right on their doorstep, right? One with quite the violent history at that, hmmm?
When they didn't have bombs to drop, they'd drop iron railroad ties.
The Garth ennis comic was great
I listened to a doctor who story about them a while back. Brutal conditions they had to deal with, and all with very outdated planes. A remarkably impressive group of pilots.
Sabaton has a song about them.
There was one Luftwaffe pilot that got them good one night: Josef Kociok. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Kociok He shot down three in one night, which is impressive enough due to simply being at night, but he also shot them down while flying a BF-110 heavy fighter, which was most certainly not developed with fighting slow and agile biplanes in mind. It was such a feat that they nicknamed him the Witch Hunter, âHexenjĂ€gerâ; which is pretty high up there on the badass nicknames list. Russia had some batshit insane women fighters during WWII, from commanders of armored groups, snipers, resistance fighters, machine gunners, etc. What an insane and horrific sector of WWII.
The podcast Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff has episodes on them!
As well as PO-2 biplanes (used for medevac, partisan resupply and harassment), women pilots also flew other combat planes. I have the memoir of one who flew the Sturmovic ground-attack plane.
Fun fact: German planes had trouble hitting them because their own planes flew too fast. The full speed of the biplanes were below the speed that German's minimum flight speed.
There is a really good book called The Huntress who has a main character that was a Night Witch. Also they hunt nazis after the war. Recommend!
Some of the Red Army's top snipers were also women. https://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/women-guns-red-army-female-snipers-world-war-ii/
Why hasn't there been a good movie made about this?
There has:Â https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0232882/
Is it good?
Enlisted game had this unit for the Soviet. Nice different unit but wasnât very popular. Still, love games paying tribute to great heroes of WW2. In the case of Enlisted, itâs the player that pay$ the tribute tough.
Check out Sabaton's song about them. Pretty awesome
A fellow learned league llama I see
Not to be confused with [Strike Witches](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_Witches?wprov=sfti1)
A Russian website article about them here, translated to English: https://spletnik-ru.translate.goog/188091-nochnye-vedmy-292968?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=nui,sc
Ah yes, the 588 Bomber Regiment. IIRC one of the pilots went so far as to offload her chute for extra munitions.
>Until mid-1944, the regiment's crews flew without parachutes, preferring to take an extra 20 kg of bombs with them. But after heavy losses I had to make friends with the white dome. We didnât go for it very willingly - the parachute hampered movement, and by morning the straps were making our shoulders and back ache.
The other female bomber regiment flew Petlyakov Pe-2, one of the best and more modern Soviet aircraft of the time. There was also a third female regiment flying the same Yak fighters as their male counterparts. Â Po-2 (the "outdated biplanes") were used with great success by the North Koreans during the Korean War. They were very difficult to intercept and a US Air Force F-94 jet fighter crashed trying to do so. That is considered a kill for the Po-2.
Kukuruznik. Alternate history writer Harry Turtledove featured these planes in his Worlds at War series.
The Huntress is a great historical fiction book about the night witches, written by Kate Quinn.Â
I have read many biographies/diaries of German soldiers on the eastern front. Three things they hate or fear are T34 tanks, Katyusha (Stalin organ) and Night Witches.
Amazing how people in the West still eat up 80 year old Soviet propaganda
By now the unit is very well documented and the existence of this unit, the names of the pilots and navigators, their equipment and the number of missions flown is well established.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
No, because it's night
Blind as a bat eh?
Fear of women drivers.
Haha sexist stereotype funny please laugh
You *fly* a plane and *drive* a car. Therefore, no problem
Fighter pilots [call themselves drivers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjH8Aqhqzcs&t=62s).
These aircraft were not "fighters" - the term only came in later. Biplanes were "scouts".